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Crown fell off after 8 hours!

W

Weaselpie

Junior member
Joined
Feb 9, 2022
Messages
5
Location
Norfolk, UK
It's currently 3.25 am and I have spent the past hour sat in the garden howling at the moon! The past two covid years have taken their toll and my health anxiety is out of control. I am a self-employed artist so you can imagine what lockdowns and restrictions have done to my income!! Just a week before the first lockdown a crown placed on a molar tooth 10 months previously fell off and had to be stuck back on. I haven't been able to afford to see my dentists since (private), and, because of the health anxiety have been putting it off anyway. Finally went a few weeks ago as I knew an old root canalled molar tooth was cracked. Dentist confident he could repair with a crown. I spent 2 weeks with a temp filling while he went on holiday and had the crown placed today. We agreed on a temporary fitting because I apparently now have an open bite due to previous NHS butchery and this needs to be adressed before final fitting. However, I wasn't prepared for the thing to fall off within 8 hours!!!! I had expressly told dentist that I need something that will be reliable for at least a month as I have an important teaching opportunity at the beginning of March and can't afford to be stressing about my teeth when I should be teaching students how to sculpt. What has just happened has confirmed my worst fears and now I don't trust ANY of the restorations this guy has placed on my teeth. I am back to a diet of porridge and smoothies and I just can't hack this crap any more!!! I wish I had just let my old NHS dentist pull out the teeth 3 years ago, but I was/am terrified of having big molar teeth extracted. I am at my wits end - sleep deprived, stressed, and extremely hungry!! I don't know what to do - it feels like my bite has been ruined and my teeth mutilated and all for nothing, and I have paid a king's ransom for the priviledge. :cry: Please can anyone help/reassure/advise? The dental practice is one that comes highly recommedned, including on this website. Thanks.
 
It's temporary cement, doesn't hold very well and if the crown is a bit compromised anyway then it's really asking a lot of it.
Get them to cement it on with permanent cement this time and deal with the bite later. One crown isn't going to make a huge difference.
 
Thank you so much for replying - I appreciate it. He's going to fit me in this afternoon. Because my bite is so open now this tooth is nowhere near touching any others so there shouldn't be any stress on it. The only ones that touch are my wisdom teeth, apparently. This has only started happening since LL7 and LR7 were mangled in several attempts to repair breaks by the NHS in 2018 (but without removing all the dental decay under the old fillings, it turns out!). Now it's much worse and I am wondering if I should just screw my courage to the sticking place and have them removed. I no longer have trust in the restorations that have been done and every meal is an obstacle course rather than a pleasure now. And because it's a private practice the bills are going up and up :(
 
Hi Weaselpie, can you explain a bit more what you mean by "LL7 and LR7 were mangled"?

Wishing you all the best for this afternoon, let us know how you get on ?
 
Hi letsconnect - Thank you so much for your kind words! x
Sorry: lower left 7 and lower right 7 - the second molars. In the space of four months they each broke twice and were filled again at emergency appointments. Despite x-rays being taken nobody spotted the decay still left in both teeth until a new dentist arrived on the scene and looked at them again (previous dentist had left). She dismissively said they'd have to be removed, added that implants might be an option but I couldn't have them on the NHS - and just left me to make an appointment! When I asked why hadn't the remaining decay been spotted before the second repairs to each tooth she just gave me a meaningful look!
At this point I sought a second opinion privately and the dentist was confident they could be saved with a pulpotomy (like a mini root canal) and crowns. However, it now transpires that the NHS botches had altered my bite,causing it to open up at the front. The new crowns then compounded the problem and you can now drive a coach and horses through the front of my teeth :(
To make matters worse, a 30 year-old root canalled tooth in front of one of the crowns has now cracked and needs a crown. The dentist tried to adjust my bite to no avail, then discovered the only biting surfaces I have now are the 3rd molars. I've been referred to an orthodentist who thinks the upper wisdom teeth have over-erupted due to all the shenannigans and will likely need extracting.

Update to today: Dentist has decided just to place a temporary filling for now, rather than try to fit the crown on, until all the adjustments have been done. He said it actually doesn't matter if the filling falls out because the root canal still has a good seal and could be left as is for several months (a pity he didn't tell me that yesterday!!!). So... I'm feeling a little calmer, but very apprehensive at the thought of extractions and how much this is all going to cost. All because an NHS dentist did a rubbish job 4 years ago :cry:
 
At this point I sought a second opinion privately and the dentist was confident they could be saved with a pulpotomy (like a mini root canal) and crowns. However, it now transpires that the NHS botches had altered my bite,causing it to open up at the front. The new crowns then compounded the problem and you can now drive a coach and horses through the front of my teeth :(
Sorry but that's very very unlikely.

To make matters worse, a 30 year-old root canalled tooth in front of one of the crowns has now cracked and needs a crown. The dentist tried to adjust my bite to no avail, then discovered the only biting surfaces I have now are the 3rd molars. I've been referred to an orthodentist who thinks the upper wisdom teeth have over-erupted due to all the shenannigans and will likely need extracting.

Do you have lower wisdom teeth in function?
 
Sorry but that's very very unlikely.



Do you have lower wisdom teeth in function?
Hi Gordon,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to me. I know correlation isn't causation but I did not have any issue with my bite until the LL7 was filled for the second time in early 2018. Never had an open bite before - and I have always been a regular visitor to the dentist so think it would have been pointed out. Prior to 2018 I could tear sellotape with my front teeth (!), now they wouldn't stop a runaway horse.
Could the upper wisdom teeth erupt spontaneously? They definitely are more visible now that even they were 2 years ago. I am 55 and female, if that helps.

Yes, I do have both my lower wisdom teeth in function - and am really keen to keep them, if possible. The extensive restorations to the two molars in front of these on both sides make it likely they will need to be extracted at some point, whatever happens in the short term with the current treatment, I think I'd be right in thinking? This would leave me with no bottom molars at all if the lower wisdoms get extracted.
All of this is quite distressing to get my head around - prior to 2018 the most extensive dental work I ever had was the one root canal 30 years ago! Other than that, just a few fillings :(
 
Well the reason I ask is that I've seen 2 cases where an open bite has developed over a very short space of time, it was a connective tissue disorder and nothing to do with over erupted teeth. So I bear it in mind when I read things like this...

If you have functioning lower 3rd molars then that makes it less likely to be an over eruption of the uppers since they'd have something to bite into if you see what I mean.

I would certainly not advocate losing functioning 3rd molars if the 2nd molars are of questionable prognosis, that'd be silly!
 
Oh, that's really interesting - thank you! To be fair, even I can see that the upper ones appear to be more visible than I remember. The orthodontist has checked my jaw function and taken x-rays (I have a mortal fear of x-rays since being diagnosed with a bone tumour some years ago - I'm always expecting something horrific to show up!). No abnormalities or misalignment - luckily I have x-rays from 2009 to compare: the upper teeth have definitely dropped down at the back. The only thing I can connect this to is the awful previous dental work that left me with a high filling and altered bite, which was then compounded with more restoration work on the 2 molars, including the crowns.
A computer model has been made of my teeth and impressions taken and I have to go back in a couple of weeks to see what the orthodentist recommends>
Thank you for the advice about the 3rd molars - I shall do everything I can to hang onto them !! :)
 
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